A Crown for the Uninvited

Seventeen-year-old Elsie Vale can mend almost anything made of thread, but the royal cloak on her worktable refuses to be ordinary. Summoned from a smoke-blackened garment factory to repair it before Queen Adeline's coronation, Elsie discovers ash in the lining and hears the names of workers the palace insists are gone. One of them is her sister Mara. The cloak is more than a royal symbol. It protects the industrial river city from lethal winter winds, and its hidden seams hold the history of the hands that made it. As Elsie follows a trail through altered fire records, missing wages, and threatened worker housing, she is forced into an uneasy alliance with Eli Mercer, a young palace archivist whose access cannot erase his family's privilege. With the coronation approaching and the storm gathering, Elsie must choose between restoring the official pattern or changing the cloak so the dead can be seen. Her decision could expose the crown, endanger her family, and force an entire city to witness what comfort was built upon.